


The Key to Continuity

by sigurfox



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sadness, depressive ramblings of the dark lords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-19 03:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12402354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigurfox/pseuds/sigurfox
Summary: Right shape and perfect match, efficiency and progress... It takes vigour. But his master - his god, his tyrant, his love - is weary and so he is, too.





	The Key to Continuity

**Author's Note:**

> My poetry muse has fucked off, so while i try to lure him back, please, accept this piece of my trash writing as a token of my devotion.

Mairon stands by the high double doors leading into the throne room – a grand gateway, opened a tiny crack, just enough to peer inside. So Mairon does.

In the great hall Melkor resembles a caged animal. Alone, he laughs a short mirthless laughter when he stirs the tectonic plates: disturbs the strands of music holding them in place with no more than an ostensibly casual gesture. Subterranean collisions are energy-consuming, and by exhaustion they deplete the rampages burning him out from the inside.

Recently he doesn’t wish to tolerate anyone’s presence in close proximity. Mastering the dull ache in his chest Mairon embraces this knowledge. Always accurately attuned to moods and needs of his Lord, he still watches over him from a distance. Indulging his own concern without angering his master.

Despite all errands running smooth and proficient, the fortress is congested with madness and frustration, and it’s not long before Mairon finds it hard to breathe here. With each steady heartbeat time flows faster and faster, as if one second pulls up another; minutes crash and stick together solidifying into hours, and like swift arrows they fly past leaving no room for questions and second thoughts.

Meticulous to absurdity, highly attentive to every small detail, Mairon picks up the shredded remains of every scheme or venture and coapts them together. Truly, he takes great delight in reforging the broken endevours. With abandon he adopts his master’s deserted thoughts, and weaving his own tunes into the craft he gets ideas into shape and puts them into life. He’s here to make it right, to make it all work.

Now, feeling the mighty vibrations of the riled up crust beneath the halls, Mairon gives away nothing but cold equanimity, even to himself. Knowing well he’ll have to deal with the consequences later. With each new chthonian ministration something inside him shifts too. Every time his master does it Mairon has to accept it and to suffer the adjustments in silence.

Endowed with opportunities however rich and potent, at one point anybody would come to a halt and inevitably want more.

He cradles the long ago begun autumn in his soul, wallows in its secret angry melancholy. No mark scores the moment when it started. Oblivious, like a wildfire engulfing the forest’s stackets on its way, Mairon rushed past it in the ceaseless chase for perfection and praise.

He senses his spirit decaying despite the growing power and strength, the expanding area of dominion. Same patterns, interlaced in dark irrupting melodies, are all caught up in one endless worn-off circle.

He feels old.

Deprived of former affections, Mairon yearns for reprieve but he can’t afford showing his distress now. Mairon realizes that Melkor’s dissonance in the end brought harmony to his own mind. He’s never been more proficient, more content in his life. He loves order and discipline beyond any measure or belief. Right shape and perfect match, efficiency and progress… It takes vigour. But his master - his god, his tyrant, _his love_ \- is weary and so he is, too.

Even at his worst his master is truly the most magnificent being in Ёa. And oh, Mairon misses him. He leans forward against the warmed up stone, puts his palms on it, and closes his eyes for several heartbeats, pleading silently for his Lord to call for him.

But all he hears is the earth groaning, the walls of the fortress shake and grind as rampant columns of magma crawl up. As if the world is still young, as if in anticipation it still sings of future full of wondrous art.

But as somewhere far-far above lava spills out and coats the slopes of the mountains in heat and venom, in his grand halls Melkor has already turned back to apathy and quiet foul mood. Dispassionate, indifferent he leaves the tortured earth to bleed out.

Mairon sighs and glances in the throne room once more.

Unsatisfied but spent, Melkor stops pacing the hall and turns away, his broad shoulders sagged. He raises his hand to touch the edge of his crown with his gloved fingers. Involuntary gesture turning into a habit.

The great room is quiet save for warm swish of Melkor’s robes, as he walks, and echoing clicks of steel-tipped boots against the obsidian floor – slow and heavy, wrong footfall. Stooped figure moving between the flickering torches and dancing shadows. Melkor limps up the dais to sit on his terrible throne.

There are strands of silver in his long pitch-black hair. The Silmarils in his crown of iron blaze mercilessly. Mairon hates them. They hurt his eyes and make it hard to look at the dear face he loves so much.

Mairon detects the prickling displeasure forwarded in his direction and before Melkor decides to lash out and reprimand him, Mairon, ever discreet, a creature of golden patience and wisdom, at last departs.

Surely, Melkor senses the music of his best Maia’s Ёala somewhere close.

Melkor has a reserve of strange fondness locked inside. Which might have been love? There’s a certain kind of love in his heart indeed, one which he withholds and cherishes, keeps it safely closed, keeps it solely to himself - his redemption, a sealed vessel of solace. Fragile and unique.

Maybe it’s just the fuel he runs on, the only fuel that is left within him. Perhaps Melkor is afraid that spilling it he will remain empty and helpless, and it all will be over. That his will is going to evaporate along with the last drops of his love. Like lava left under the vicious stars. Useless, wasted. It cools and blackens and in the end loses its rage, beauty, original essence.

But frustration grows more and more destructive as Melkor gives up one task after another as his fall deepens the scowl on his visage, marking him old and weak. The most ancient being in Ёa. His unexpended initial inspiration morphs into idle permanent fury, it persists trying to find a way out, never succeeding.

Whatever illusions his lieutenant conceits and drenches himself in, they don’t matter. Melkor can read him through and through, down to each sacred fundamental note. Oh yes. The passion in work so ideally combined with cold prudence in organization, drive for power and leadership… Behind the composed and pretty façade Melkor sees the rising unhappiness and temper. Almost enough to create an eruption of his own, Melkor notices bitterly. Well, he’ll come to it, mayhap, later.

But so far Melkor is the King of Arda, he is here alone on top of the world and this is how it should be.

While they keep up their dance on clandestine terms it’ll be all right. Hopefully this ridiculous tension would snap not before the hordes of the west arrive to their gates.

But one wish has nothing to do with his blackheart’s bitter envy and fears. Love in him whispers the hopes that his lieutenant would never lose what Melkor had to lose in his malicious haste towards total control above everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Mairon is deeply hurt by Melkor’s self-inflicted isolation and ever growing discontent and distrust. But he’s faithful till the end, so he would never break his oath of fealty, no matter what his master thinks.
> 
> If you squint there’s a little speculation upon the idea that an Ainu has more power over physical world, the weaker they are in flesh. (like, Sauron’s example in LotR).


End file.
